NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY ODISHA

Buying Behaviour of Consumers at the Time of Purchasing Bikes

Acknowledgement

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INTRODUCTION

The marketing concept is consumer oriented and the emphasis is more on the consumer rather than on the product. The essence of modern marketing lies in building of profit along with creating meaningful value satisfaction for the costumers, whose needs and desires have to be coordinated with the set of products and production programmes. Therefore, marketing success of an enterprise depends as its ability to create a community of satisfied consumers. All the business activities should be carried out in ways which are directed towards the satisfaction of the consumer needs.Consumer behavior is affected by a host of variables ranging from personal, professional needs, attitudes and values, personality characteristics, social economic and cultural background, age, gender, professional status to social influences of various kinds exerted a family, friends, colleagues, and society as a whole. The combination of these factors help the consumer in decision making further Psychological factors that as individual consumer needs, motivations, perceptions attitudes, the learning process personality characteristics are the similarities, which operate across the different types of people and influence their behavior.There are four major factors which influences on the buying behavior of consumer.1. Cultural factors2. Social factors3. Personal factors4. Psychological factorsSo a study had been conducted on Buying Behaviour of Consumers at the Time of Purchasing Bikes in Cuttack with a sample of 100 consumers by selecting two wheeler motor bikes i.e. Hero Honda, Yamaha, and TVS bikes and data had been collected through structured questionnaire.

Marketing starts with the consumers and ends with the consumer. Satisfaction of the consumers becomes the most important goal of a business enterprise. The effort to ensure consumer satisfaction lies in understanding the consumer, his likes dislikes, his expectations and motivation.An analysis of the consumers behavior in terms of consumer consumption patterns, consumer preferences, consumer motivation, consumer buying process and shopping behavior is very much helpful to formulate a firms marketing strategy. So the ultimate objective of a business firm is to create a consumer who is said to be pivot around whom the entire business of a firm revolves. Thus the marketing concept is consumer oriented and the emphasis is more on the consumer rather than on the product. The essence of modern marketing lies in building of profit along with creating meaningful value satisfaction for the costumers, whose needs and desires have to be coordinated with the set of products and production programmes. Therefore, marketing success an enterprise depends as its ability to create a community of satisfied consumers. All the business activities should be carried out in ways which are directed towards the satisfaction of the consumer needs.A consumer decision to purchase a particular brand of motor cycle consumers result to complex interplay of consumer variables the starting point for the company provides the decision process marketing stimuli in shape of brand, promotion, and price and distribution strategy. The potential consumer along with other stimuli already exciting receives the marketing stimuli in the environment. The stimuli my social economic, cultural, technological and political in nature.Consumer behavior is the study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioral variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general.Customer behavior study is based on consumer buying behavior, with the customer playing the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer. Relationship marketing is an influential asset for customer behavior analysis as it has a keen interest in the re-discovery of the true meaning of marketing through the re-affirmation of the importance of the customer or buyer. A greater importance is also placed on consumer retention, customer relationship management, personalisation, customization and one-to-one marketing. Social functions can be categorized into social choice and welfare functions.Each method for vote counting is assumed as a social function but if Arrows possibility theorem is used for a social function, social welfare function is achieved. Some specifications of the social functions are decisiveness, neutrality, anonymity, monotonocity, unanimity, homogeneity and weak and strong Pareto optimality. No social choice function meets these requirements in an ordinal scale simultaneously. The most important characteristic of a social function is identification of the interactive effect of alternatives and creating a logical relation with the ranks. Marketing provides services in order to satisfy customers. With that in mind, the productive system is considered from its beginning at the production level, to the end of the cycle, the consumer.

MAJOR FACTORS INFLUENCING BUYING BEHAVIOR: Marketing starts with consumers and ends up with consumers. Satisfaction of consumers becomes the most important goal of a business enterprise and the assurance of consumer satisfaction is being done by understanding consumers likes, dislikes, expectation and motivation to buy a particular product.An analysis of the consumer behavior in terms of consumer consumption patterns, preferences, consumer orientation, consumer buying process and shopping behavior is very much helpful in formulating a firms marketing strategy.Thus the ultimate objective of the business firm is to create a consumer who is said to pivot around whom the business of the firm is said to revolve.Thus a business firms marketing concept is consumer oriented and emphasis is done more on the consumer rather than the product. The essence of modern marketing lies in building profit along with creating meaningful satisfaction for the consumers, whose needs and desires have to be coordinated within the set of products and production programmes. Thus the marketing success depends upon its ability to create a community of satisfied consumers. All the business activities should be carried out in ways which are directed towards the satisfaction of consumer needs.A consumers decision process to purchase a particular motor bike is being resulted as a complex interplay of a consumer variables the starting point for the company provides the decision process marketing stimuli in shape of brand ,promotion ,price, and distribution strategy. The potential consumer along with the other stimuli already exciting him receives the marketing stimuli in the environment. The stimuli may be social, economic, cultural, technological and political in nature.There are four major factors which influences on the buying behavior of consumer.1. Cultural factors2. Social factors3. Personal factors4. Psychological factors1. Cultural factors:Consumer behavior cultural can be defined as the some total of learned belief, values and customs that serve to guide and direct the consumer behavior of all members of that society.Cultural is a learned through the following three ways:-1. Formal learning2. Informal learning3. Technical learning.Cultural is a most fundamental determinant persons wants and behavior, the growing child acquires a set of values, perceptions, preferences and behavior, through his family and key institutions.2. Social factors:Consumer behavior is also influenced by such social factors as reference groups, family and social roles and status.PERSONAL FACTORS:Buyers decisions are also influenced by personal characteristics, the buyers age, life cycle stages, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle and personality and self-concept.PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS:Abraham Mallows needs can be ranked in order of importance from the low biological needs to the higher levels of psychological needs.MASLOWS hierarchy of human needs make us understand consumer motivation. It is useful for the marketer who can identify what generic level need this brand is capable fulfilling and accordingly position his brand up with relevant marketing inputs. Brands such as food and clothes are bought to fulfill psychological needs.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY1) To study the behavioral factors of consumers in motor bikes.2) To analyze the impact of behavioral factors of consumers on choosing particular brand of motor bike.3) To suggest various factors to improve sales.4) To study the consumers opinion of their motor bikes regarding its features like appearance, mileage, price etc.,RESEARCH METHODOLOGYSource of Data:Primary Data:The primary data collected through questionnaires administered to a sample of 100 consumers selected from Cuttack the Questionnaire was pre-Designed and pre-tested before it was administered.Secondary Data:Secondary data was collected through various publications of newspapers, magazines, books and magazines websites of Hero Honda, and TVS bikes.Sample Design:A total of 100 consumers were selected from Cuttack for this study to analyze the consumers behavior with reference to select motor bikes i.e., Hero Honda, Yamaha, and TVS bike.

FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS:The research done on the competitor strategies of motorcycles left us with a number of findings. All these findings and conclusions are basically drawn from the questionnaires, which are filled by the respondents in person.Regarding awareness of the brand motor bikes, above table indicates that the advertisement for Hero Honda bikes are 45 respondents where as the lowest is the 25. But family members are 10 respondents and for Yamaha are 5 respondents. Whereas from friends 40 respondents are Yamaha and also 25 for brand name.Regarding the age of respondents, most of the respondents are below 30 years of age and chosen for Yamaha bikes, whereas 40 chosen for Hero Honda, but whereas in the age group of 30-50, 45 respondents chosen for Hero Honda, for Yamaha it is only 30 respondents above 50 years of age have preferred Yamaha bikes. The least is Hero Honda with 15 respondents.Regarding satisfaction of motor bikes 85 respondents have stated that Yamaha satisfaction is highest and the lowest is for TVS bikes i.e. 65.35 respondents purchase the Hero Honda Bike due to acceptance of design/style/model, whereas 45 respondents do so for Yamaha and only 20 respondents opted for TVS Bike following acceptance of the bikes design, etc. followed by Hero Honda and TVS. This shows that the sales of Yamaha motor bike are more by way of its design/style/model.As far as mileage per liter of petrol is concerned, Hero Honda is ruling the market and finding favour with the consumers. Yamaha and TVS are far below the expectations of the consumers based on mileage per liter of petrol. This is also due to constant advertisements through newspapers, TV, Cable TV, hoardings, road shows, etc. Hero Honda attained supremacy due to mileage factor. In these hard days of price increases and poor incomes, everyone is concerned with economic use of vehicles. Naturally Hero Honda has become favourite of the masses.As we can see, 60% of the purchasers of Hero Honda are the students, while 40% of the purchasers of TVS are the employees. That means Hero Honda bike is more popular with the students, TVS is more popular with the employees. Whereas Businessmen are opting for Yamaha as the above data shows 45% of the purchasers of Yamaha are the Businessmen.Out of 100 respondents, 50 respondents have stated that sales of Yamaha is due to its speed followed by Hero Honda for which 35 respondents spoke in favour based on its speed feature.Regarding sales by price of bikes, highest is 55 respondents opined that the price is high for Yamaha bikes, medium is 45 respondents opined for Hero Honda bikes. 45 respondents have stated that TVS bikes are averagely priced.45 respondents have voted for Yamaha based on its superior technology compared to Hero Honda for which 40 respondents voted favourably based on its technology. This shows that Yamaha technology is marginally superior compared to Hero Honda. TVS is a poor third with 15 respondents voting for it, as far as technology feature is concerned.Regarding after sales service of motor bikes, 50 respondents have responded very good for service, followed by Yamaha with 45 respondents stating good.

SUGGESTIONS /RECOMMENDATIONS:After analyzing the findings, the following suggestions have been prepared. Great care has been taken in making these suggestions for the improvement of consumers opinion.1. There is a heavy demand for Hero Honda motorcycles in the market, so their supply has to be drastically improved so as to meet the demand of the customer.2. Some of the respondents are suggested to improve the mileage of Yamaha and TVS Bikes.3. A considerable number of respondents opined that there is a need to improve the technology of TVS bikes.4. A vast majority of the respondents felt the design of Hero Honda bikes should be changed so as to attract the customers.5. The bikes recently introduced by Hero Honda are mostly concerned about youth. So, they should also consider middle-aged people while manufacturing.6. Some of the respondents felt that the price of Yamaha is high and it should be decreased so as to attract more customers.

REFERENCES:1. Hawkins D.I.Best, R.J. and Convey, K.A. Consumer Behaviour : Implications for Marketing Strategy, (Rev.ed), Business Publications, Inc. Texas, 2001.2. Howard John H., and Sheth, Jagdish N., The Theory of Buyers Behaviour, John Wiley and Sons Inc., New York, 2000.3. Karsarjian H.H. and Robertson T.S. Perspectives in Consumer Behaviour, SCOH Forman & Company, Illinois, 2001.4. Kotler Philip, Marketing Management, analysis, planning implementation and control, Prentice Hall of India Publishing, New Delhi.2002.5. Schiffman G.Leon., Consumer Behaviour, Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi 2001.

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